I started thinking about my game design, and I realized that my scale of vision is probably more work than possibly feasible. At least in real time. I like the concept of real time, but I think that it''s been very "hedged" by game designers to the point that it''s not REALLY real-time, and that the scale you make your time measurements with can drastically alter gameplay. Obviously if real time were real time, games would be played over years instead of hours, but I don''t think everything is scaled quite correctly. For example, take the concept of building infrastructures versus building units...or versus transporting units across a certain distance. In some games, the time it takes for a unit to travel a certain distance may be the same time span it takes to build a large manufacturing plant. In anything other than historical games, this just isn''t right. Designs like this seriously affect game balance and design, and I''m not stressing pure realism here so much as a very careful consideration of the scale of time. But my issue goes deeper than scaling everything correctly, and it''s something that worries me about my game design. I''d like to have a scale on the order of a Masters of Orion or Imperium Galactica, but the problem is that battles may consist of literally thousands of units. I could scale this down somewhat, but then I''d dilute some of the immersion and flavor of the game. For example, instead of having companies as the smallest controllable unit, I could make battalions or regiments the smallest size. But I think this abstracts things too much. Another possible solution is to somehow break up battles into sections, and play each segment in real time in turns. For example, for a very large battle, it could be broken into 4 "theatres" which would be played one at a time in sequential order over a certain amount of time. Again though, this is sort of a kludge, and it gives the player a foreknowledge that a battlefield commander would not have. The last solution I can think of is to slow down the gameplay much like Starfleet command did. This would allow the player to think things through much like a turn based game. I think this is probably the best way to go, but it''s disadvantage will be slowing things down to a crawl for a player to sift through all the information. Partially the reason I''ve been so interested in AI controlled Commanders is to relieve the player from lots of management and decision making. When I really started looking at my game flow, I realized that it would be a lot more like being a director or a "choreographer" than being an armchair general. Basically the player would make some high level decisions, and alter the flow of events as need be. The player would set the pieces on the field, but for the most part, it''s more like he''s a stage director watching a play go by and occasionally giving directions rather than telling the actors how to do and say every little thing. I''m not sure if this would suit a lot of players that like to micromanage, but I think in some ways, even though I''m stressing realism in my game, I think in many ways it will be easier for newbies to approach my game since a lot of the little details will be handled by the AI commanders.

How about this: Make the game multiplayer, and allow different players to be different ranks. The highest rank directs the largest area. For example, in a world war, the highest ranking officer says "take this country". Those immediately below him tell their subordinates "you take this region, you take this other region" etc. His next-down tells his subordinates "take this city". Get a whole chain of command and everything from the individual troop movements to the movement of HUGE armies is controlled by actual people. The problem is that the higher ranking officers would probably get bored since they wouldn''t have much to do too often. Those ranks could be reserved for people that are great tacticians but dont play the game much (if it was a continual game) since the big picture doesn''t change too often (unless they find out something like half the enemy army has moved without their side noticing it and the whole army is now flanked, but the guy in control of the army should be there to take care of that. let the delay of him waiting for the highest-rank guy getting on simulate the time it takes the letter to get there or something [enemies would of course be jamming radios or whatever other devices] =-)


"I believe; therefore, it is." -True Perception

That''s actually a pretty interesting idea. You could make it a co-op style, or a team-style game. I hadn''t really been thinking too much of multiplayer because I''ve been so focused on single player gaming.

However, as a multiplayer option, that idea works really well.

Having different ranks for multiplayer, each controlling a different level of battle is an EXCELLENT idea. But you''d have to find a way to rotate players who get promoted, so nobody hogs the position of commander in chief for too long.

The time scale in so many games, even great ones, makes no sense when you think about it. Like in Civilization... early in the game, it can take your horsemen like 200 years to run across an island. And later in the game, there''s no way to play out a war in a reasonable amount of time... WWII was over in, what, 6 years? It would take maybe 30 years to play out a battle of that magnitude in Civ. Anyway...

In the case of your game idea... if I understand what you are describing correctly, I would say that breaking the game up into different time scale chunks makes the most sense to me. For example, if overseeing the economic expansion of your empire and resolving a war do not fit naturally into the same time scale, I don''t see any reason to try to cram them into the same system. If a battle can effectively be resolved instantaneously in comparison to the normal empire administration time scale, go ahead and resolve it in a seperate mode. Makes sense to me.

Hamdoon-
I was thinking of seperating my military and economic functions into two seperate phases. The military portion would be real-time, but the economic and logistical phase would be turn based (sort of like Shogun). But there are still parts that seem to be out of whack, so I need to figure out how to make sure all the time scales are in balance.

Like I said, I see my game as almost being a battle choreographer. You direct your troop movements even prebattle, just as importantly as you would during fighting itself. Figuring out how to position your troops should be more time consuming than once the battle has already commenced. What I mean by this is that planning for and transporting troops for D-Day was far more time intensive than actually moving the troops across the beach.

I think that by incorporating a time scale like this, then planning battles becomes much more vital. Some battles last for days in real life, so these are candidates for possible reinforcements arriving. Basically I wanted to capture a game with a true feel for a campaign mode. I want the ability to pull back your forces to position yourself better, or to let your opponent overextend his own supply and logistics lines. Without a proper scale of time, I don''t think this is possible.

Today''s games don''t have very good campaign styles of play. Basically you group a bunch of units, decide where you want to attack, and then you either feed your forces some reinforcements from your factories and give them waypoints to join the melee. I see a much much different system, perhaps because my scale of battle is so much bigger. Since the scale of battle is bigger, I think I have to pay attention to other scales as well.

just realize that no matter what you do you will make some compromises that will seem quirky. this the nature of games. a large galatic battle may take several days to complete, thus giving lots of micro managment may overwhelm the player. especially if he must worry about the rest of the battles that will be occering concurrently, and about the larger picture of the war. i suggest to keep time frames very consistent, and dont force a player to micro manage a battel unless you feel it will help in the long run (ie things like economy is of no concern to the player and can be set to "auto"). personally i perfer a more global control of things or the micro control. both at the same time dont mix well and will confuse players unless it can scale EXTREMLY well. this is especially true of non turn based games. turn based games allow better scalling of things because the player can think, and take all the time to view everything.

Sounds like what you are describing is a battle system that takes place at what in wargaming is called the operational level of detail.

It seems like from what you describe, you ought to think about reducing the number of controllable units. I think it will be hard to operate at the high level you''re talking about with so many units to control.

Hamdoon-
You''re exactly right, I want to delve in to the operational aspects of wargaming. Nice to see another grognard around here Actually, I think my game is more of a warfare simulator or battle choregrapher as opposed to a RTS game. As for the level of controllable units, one of the things I wanted was an interface that didn''t require micromanaging your units.

In a nutshell, here are lots of aspects and features I want in my game:

1. Hierarchical organization of Commanders


1. a- Commanders do the actual controlling of the units, not the player


2. b- Hierarchy of command differs from country to country


2. Units are building blocks that compose larger Organized Units


1. a- eg. if a company is the smallest base unit, then a Battalion is an OU of these units


2. b- Organized units are led by Commanders


3. c- OU''s in turn make up Control Groups


3. Players don''t have absolute control of units of Commanders


1. a- Players will not always have 100% control of a Commander of his Unit/OU/Control Group


2. b- Players will not always have access to Commanders and OU''s


3. c- Players will not always know what Commanders and units know


4. In relation to #3 above, Communication objects must pass between player and Commanders


1. a- Communication tokens can be intercepted or jammed


5. Morale will play a role in #3.


6. Military and economic play will be in seperate phases


7. Logistics and supply lines will be crucial


1. a- Upkeep and maintenance factored in to an army''s potential


2. b- supply lines vital to keep troops at operational levels


8. Customizable Military Doctrine


1. a- Command and Control, chain of command, support, TO&E will be customizable by player



Hopefully by having the AI commanders control large scale operations, and even many tactical level details, the size of my game will be a little more manageable. Basically the player who will be represented by an Avatar on the field, will pass requests as orders to his Commanders who then will enact on these orders the best they can. I think I will have to include "routines" which will essentially be strategic, operational and tactical level "battle plans" for commanders to play out. In lots of ways, this is similar to how Football computer games are played. The player sets up a certain kind of "style" and then the players act on this style. The player''s focus will then be on correcting the flow of action as the battle unfolds.

Based on what you describe, I would suggest that you handle the different different levels in these ways:

- Strategic: Player makes all decisions here directly... diplomacy, committing forces to different regions, and constructing CU''s...

- Operational: Player here has partial control. Player gives orders or sets policy for the commanders that are in charge of the CU''s.

- Tactical: Player has little or no control here. Either this level is simply abstracted to combat results of the operational level, or the AI commanders are totally in charge.

If you included a feature where the player could alter the "time compression" of the game, you *might* be able to keep the game all at one time scale (i.e. no dropping into a seperate battle mode).

I think the delegating things to your commanders idea is a good one. It might be somewhat difficult to implement, but it could be interesting.

I like the idea of having commanders that have different goals and personalities, so you need to use them in various ways to take advantage of their strengths. For example, one commander might be an excellent tactician, but will tend to ignore orders and rush his forces into battle. Managing you personnel is not something that has been explored much in game battle systems. I think it could be fun, but it might not be what you were envisioning for your game. =)